Robert Boyle, R.I.P.
An incredibly gifted and durable film artist died in Los Angeles Sunday at the age of 100. Robert Boyle was a production designer and art director whose career included the fabulous look of Alfred...
View ArticleThe scariest horror movie of the new century?
(Another golden oldie during your faithful blogger’s weeklong R&R. To stay up to the minute, follow my Twitter feed on this page or at @joesview) Adapted from a Stephen King novella by...
View Article‘Red Desert’: when Monica & Michelangelo ruled the arthouses
Tonight at 6:30 it will be my pleasure to introduce a screening of “Red Desert” at the beautiful Bijou Theatre in downtown Bridgeport. The 1964 picture was the fourth collaboration between the Italian...
View ArticleIs Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ the greatest film ever made?
When the British Film Institute journal Sight and Sound announced the results of its once-a-decade poll of international film critics, many were shocked by the fact that “Citizen Kane” lost the...
View ArticleAlfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ — still strange after all these years
By any standard of any era in movie history, Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” is a very odd concoction. What begins as a half-baked romantic comedy — about a San Francisco heiress (Tippi Hedren) and a...
View ArticleA blast from the past — the movie of Arthur Hailey’s “Hotel”
I can still remember the kick I got as a teen reading the first big Arthur Hailey novel, “Hotel,” in the summer of 1966. Hailey would go on to have a very lucrative career as a formula novelist...
View ArticleBad Movies We Love: ‘Frogs’ — Ray Milland laid low
If you have Amazon Prime or Netflix, you don’t need to spend an extra penny to see one of the goofiest environmental horror movies ever made — “Frogs.” Although it’s a little too slow and serious for...
View ArticleUnderrated performance: Sienna Miller as Tippi Hedren
The mixed-to-negative reviews and a higher profile Alfred Hitchcock biopic released within the same month, kept me from checking out the 2012 HBO/BBC film “The Girl” until the other night. It’s...
View ArticleHow demographics have changed major studio films
A depressing study of big studio filmmaking last year was recently released by the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California. Looking at 2014’s 100...
View Article
